Sigal Bar-Tal

Scientific biography: My name is Sigal Bar-Tal. I am an MA graduate from the University of Haifa, department of English Language and Literature.  I also completed a second degree (MEd) with honors in Leadership and Management of Educational Organizations at Oranim Academic College. Over the course of my 24-year career in teaching at the Hebrew Reali School system, I have filled a variety of educational and managerial posts. I am currently in my fourth year as the English coordinator of all elementary and middle school classes within the entire Reali school system, which encompasses pupils from kindergarten to 9th grade. I am in my second year in the Ph.D. program, under the supervision and guidance of Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai.

Fields of research: My Ph.D. dissertation explores the themes of marginalization and containment of suffocated narratives and the different ways in which they are manifested through the choice and use of language in post-colonial Indian novels in English. The novels give voice to the national trauma and follow the events before, amidst, and after the violent and bloody partition of the Indian Sub-continent The main concern of my research relates to the different ways in which the English language and culture are infused into the narratives of the colonized. English and Englishness are presented as multilayered markers of control and subjugation yet also as markers of cultural civility bearing the promise for potential economic prosperity for the colonized.